The Wide World of Medical Informatics

I got thinking the other day (and have thought this for quite a long time- as far back as 1999) that if there was one niche or sub-field that really falls right into my interests and background it is medical informatics. I have degrees in cell and molecular biology, as well as computer science. I have been fortunate to work in hospitals, medical research facilities, and in medical schools at various levels. Not to mention my career as an Oracle consultant.

I have been very very busy recently, and have decided to try and post regularly again. This particular subject motivated me to do so! To start with, the subject "The WIDE World of..." is misleading. It is true that Medical Informatics requires a very wide skill set as opposed to what most strong oracle developers individually, or most medical practitioners individually have. Each of these are very deep careers in themselves! However, we can also say the subject itself, as opposed to the knowledge needed to DO the work is not particularly wide. Nor is it very established and mature! Schools only recently in the last decade have even developed patchwork curriculum studies to earn certificates or master's degrees in bioinformatics, or medical informatics, or medical analytics.

To top it off, I have noted that such top schools including Northwestern University, right here in Chicago, Illinois, USA, don't have anywhere near the strict admissions standards applied to these newer programs in their infancy. You don't even have to take the GMAT or GRE (graduate admissions exam) to matriculate! It is recommended, but not required. Admissions In most cases, this indicates a program or field of study still in it's infancy and looking to establish itself as a solid undeniable mainstream option.

I do believe that as of now, it is undeniably necessary and important. However, most medical institutions are in the stone-age. Any very solid technical person that steps into hospitals or even doctor's offices will see some systems that are VERY complicated and state of the art. Other systems, such as records systems and software programs are buggy, poorly laid out, or cause the practitioners (nurses, doctors, executives) headaches when trying to enter data, or more importantly...retrieve data that is accurate, up to date, and understandable! The real focus...informatics...is important. The analytics and informatics methodologies in a business intelligence lifecycle simply are lacking in major healthcare organizations. I am not just talking about hospitals, but health insurance companies too!

I have personally sat in doctor's offices where multiple doctors and even medical execs can't stress enough how much they hate having to use EPIC Systems software, or Cerner Software.
I don't know enough about them to explain the issues, but I have seen the pained expression too many times. I have plenty of friends that worked from a technical or manager perspective for major healthcare insurance companies that ALL complain about the same thing: old and not too sharp technology OR sharp technology being used the wrong way which costs even more $$.

I've read it and heard it in person so many times that I've decided to try and write a few blog posts on this topic. The field is ripe. The education is now available. The technologists (Oracle BI and DW folks) are very much present and ready. The doctors know just enough of what they want but VERY few have the skills that we Oracle BIDW developers and managers have.

I want to provide a link for readers to pursue:
Saving Lives With Oracle

What might a VERY general role of the Oracle scientist, or informatics individual be?

Medical Informaticists fill a vital role in health care systems management, verifying and certifying critical computer system components:

• Certifying medical systems for accuracy and completeness

• Validating medical decision support systems and expert systems for clinical diagnosis and treatment

• Verifying the accuracy of Oracle database output results and reports
  

Is it necessary to have a M.D.? I do not think so. However, this is not like ANY other consulting or business engagement. The doctor or the healthcare organization has a lot of knowledge and very detailed ideas of how things need to work. This is just not something the average consultant can pick up in a few meetings! Unless you have some experience in scientific industries, or have worked in a medical or healthcare settings, or have an actual M.D., you'll likely need to work with a person or small team from the organization that knows all the ins and outs of healthcare, diagnoses, patient records, records management, prescription management, insurance, and core hospital measures and operating practices!

Do not be held back by that though! The reason I believe this field has been too slow to advance, is lack of education, and extremely high amounts of knowledge necessary. I will continue writing on this topic. I'd like to disuss things such as data mining, analytics, and other topics that are relevant!

Oracle Warehouse Builder and SAP Sources

I saw a nifty link that Antonio Romero, one of Oracle's OWB product managers, gave out. When I sat in the Publisher's and Author's round table event at the last Open World, I was lucky to sit with the head of Oracle's documentation and discuss a bit on the online documentation structure, and changes coming. As well, I heard from OWB PMs that the OWB docs would be filled out more. Here is the start of that effort, in chapter 7 - Retrieving Data From SAP Sources.
Antonio kindly brought this to attention recently.

Paper accepted for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

Someone out there likes me, and I'll need to find out who. But the good news is that I get to share with the community some 'lessons learned' and case studies related to OWB. My paper was an early accptance to the ODTUG 2009 Kaleidoscope conference, and I am grateful for that. The list of people already accepted is quite an accomplished group. I sincerely hope that OWB 11gR2 is released and available by that point in time, as I will then get to discuss those new features along with 11gR1/1ogR2. Although the case study aspect will not be possible for 11gR2 since it is only in beta.

So come on out to ODTUG's 2009 confernece and find out how OWB can be put to some serious use...after all, we won the 2008 Oracle Partner of the Year Titan Award in Business Intelligence and OWB was a HUGE part of that.

Grants, Grants, and More Grants - WITH GRANT OPTION

ORA 01720 grant option does not exist for....

Simple mistake, but easy to fall into.

User_A creates a view called AV. This view accesses some of User_A's objects but also accesses one of User_B's tables too (table name is BT). No problem, User_A had been granted select on that table (BT) from User_B:

(as User_B) GRANT SELECT ON USER_B.BT TO USER_A

Now, however, User_A wants to grant select on that view, AV to a third user...User_C.
Even if User_C had also been granted select on User_B.BT table, USER_A would not be able to simply say:

(as User_A) GRANT SELECT ON USER_A.AV TO USER_C

instead you'll see:

ORA 01720 grant option does not exist

What this means is that USER_A tried to grant access to one of USER_B's tables to USER_C through the view AV. Even though USER_C had been directly granted select on USER_B.BT from USER_B itself, you'll still see the above error message.

Only the schema that owns the object can grant privileges to that object unless the 'with grant option' is included in the command. The 'with grant option' allows you to give the user that receives the grant (with the grant option) the ability to grant that same privilege to other users too. In a way, it is like giving a bit of your authority on one of your own objects to another trusted schema. Here is an example of the use of the with grant option:

(As USER_B) GRANT SELECT ON USER_B.BT TO USER_A WITH GRANT OPTION

What this did was it allowed USER_A to then grant USER_C select access to USER_B.BT table. It ALSO indirectly allows USER_A to grant select on USER_B.BT table through the view, USER_A.AV.

You can now perform the following with no problems:

(as User_A) GRANT SELECT ON USER_A.AV TO USER_C

Oracle Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Linux, and more Linux

So I've been building a few Virtual Machines using Oracle VM as well as VMWare using different distros of Linux to see the major fuss between them all. Seems everyone has a favorite.

At least from an Install point of view, Ubuntu was easily smoother, however OEL offered many more installation and configuring options to start right away. This I liked. I have to be honest, I could care less how pretty and customizable Ubntu seems to be if OEL can run Oracle software better in any way. I'll keep posting anything that I find to be a deal breaker for me. I am just looking for the best of breed to build out my many testbeds for all the configurations of the Oracle stack I'll need. I am sure many of you out there are in the same boat!